Mitch McConnell defends ‘imperfect’ deal

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says he supported the fiscal cliff bill as an “imperfect solution” because he didn’t want taxes increases on nearly every American — but now it’s all about cutting spending.

“Earlier this week, I helped negotiate an imperfect solution aimed at avoiding the so-called ‘fiscal cliff.’ If I had my way taxes would not have gone up on anyone, but the unavoidable fact was this if we had sat back and done nothing taxes would have gone up dramatically on every single American, and I simply couldn’t allow that to happen,” McConnell wrote in a Yahoo! News op-ed.

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And as lawmakers prepare for another round of negotiations on raising the debt ceiling and addressing the sequester, Republicans are done talking about raising revenue, he said.

”I have news for him (President Barack Obama): the moment that he and virtually every elected Democrat in Washington signed off on the terms of the current arrangement, it was the last word on taxes,” the Kentucky Republican wrote. “That debate is over.”

He continued: “We simply cannot increase the nation’s borrowing limit without committing to long overdue reforms to spending programs that are the very cause of our debt.”